March 2009

We’re looking for a few good people to join our team. We have a number of open positions listed in our jobs section that we’d like to fill and who better to ask then our avid blog readers. Most of the open positions are for developer roles based in Sweden, but we’re looking for the best and brightest so we’re always willing to make exceptions in regards to location for the right person.

We like to think of Spotify as a fun, exciting and challenging place to work. If you think you’d be a good fit for our team (or know someone who might be) then brush off that CV and head on over to our jobs section for more details.

We have a great exclusive pre-release available to Spotify Premium users in the UK. Starting today you can listen to the the debut single from Zarif, who some are calling the “next big thing in British soul”. The 23 year old’s new single, Let Me Back, (out 6th April) is exclusively available for Spotify Premium in the UK until the 23rd of March and for all Spotify users after that.

Zarif herself is a big fan of Spotify. She’s put together her own collaborative playlist and would love for fans to add their favorite tracks to it.

Along with the today’s pre-releases we also have an overall update to our music catalogue to let you know about. About 1,7000 singles and albums were added, in total about 22,000 new tracks. Included in today’s update is the latest solo album from Peter Doherty, Grace/Wasteland, and a new single from the Pet Shop Boys, Love, etc..

For a full listing of today’s additions please have a look at the Google Doc. As with every update not all albums listed may be available in your country due to regional restrictions.

Norwegian electronic music duo, Röyksopp, are releasing their latest album, Junior, on March 23rd but starting today Spotify Premium users in Sweden and the UK can pre-listen to the release. The new album includes vocals from some great artists like Lykke Li and Robyn, so if you’re not a premium subscriber yet, now’s a great time to sign up, It’s What You Want.

We have another update to our music catalogue today. If you were looking for something to do this weekend feel free to browse through the latest additions. Overall we added just over 7,500 albums and singles to Spotify, about 88,000 tracks in total.

A lot of today’s titles come from indie artists represented by Merlin. We’ve also added the much anticipated back catalogue content from Radiohead, albums such as The Bends and OK Computer are now available.

For a full listing of today’s additions please have a look at the Google Doc. As with every update not all albums listed may be available in your country due to regional restrictions.

One of the more common questions we get from users is how they can create and share playlists with friends. We decided to put together a short tutorial to highlight this feature so if you’re wondering how you can get started sharing Spotify with other have a look.

We plan to make more of these videos in the coming weeks to help highlight all the cool features that Spotify has, if there’s a specific feature or functions you’d like to see a video of let us know and we’ll look into making it.

We’ve updated our continuously growing catalogue today with another 2,200 releases, in total over 24,000 tracks were added. Some of this weeks new releases include Kelly Clarkson latest album which we previously had as a premium only release and a new release from indie rock band Handsome Furs. We’ve also added a number of releases from Warp Records such as albums by Battles and Aphex Twin.

For a full listing of todays update please have a look at our Google Doc. As always not all of the release may be available in your region.

This Thursday night, March 12th, the official release party for Lorentz & M. Sakarias’ new album, Vi mot världen, is being held at Kägelbanan in Stockholm and we’ve got 5 pairs of tickets to give away. If you’re interested in being added to the guest list leave a comment on the blog and we’ll contact the winners on Thursday. The bar opens at 20 and the party gets started at 22, the event in 18+. For more detailed information check out the official site.

Each month we’ve seen community services and sites pop up in support of Spotify and we’re really impressed with the work that has gone into them. There are even a few blogs, like The Pansentient League, which review all these new services and collects them in one place.

Some of the more interesting sites that have recently appeared include ShareMyPlaylists, a great new playlist sharing site. Toastify, which in an add-on to give you a pop-up on track changes and allows global hot key use. Lastify, which adds love/ban buttons from Last.fm (for Mac OS only) to compliment our built-in scrobbling support and Fresh Spotify which alerts users to when we add new music from your favorite artists.

We don’t recommend any one site in particular, we think they’re all great, and we really love to see interesting and creative uses of Spotify. If you’ve got a community site or are working on a new cool use for Spotify let us know and we might feature it in a future blog post.

In 2007 Salem Al Fakir was named Best Newcomer by Swedish music publishers after his successful debut album, This Is Who I Am. On March 18th he releases his latest album, Astronaut, starting today Spotify Premium users in Sweden, Finland and Norway can listen to it first with an exclusive pre-release.